Run your finger on a map along Russia’s western borders. If a legacy plan started by President Obama is fulfilled, there will soon be American military boots on the ground, close to its complete length from Romania to Norway. 5000 US Army troops are deploying to Poland. Chris Lievsay of PBS NewsHour watched them arrive.

The endless dispute between Albuquerque City Hall and Police Headquarters and their Federal Justice Department reform monitors drags on, with the pace of real reform even slower than that. The Albuquerque team says Monitor James Ginger’s been mean to them, and has asked the supervising Judge to insert a mediator into the process. Investigative reporter Jeff Proctor wonders if the home team is trying to score points or just run out the clock as a new Donald Trumo-Jeff Session Justice team takes over.

The harshest winter in a decade has hit southeastern Europe. Low temperatures recorded maybe 3 times a century are turning refugee camps into death camps. One cold snap killed 5 children in camp for refugees from Syria and Iraq on the Greek island of Samos.

The worst suffering has been among children and pregnant women, the subjects of Pulitzer Prize winning AP Photo-journalist Muhammed Muheisen’s recent series of pictures. He takes us inside one camp north of Athens.

Most Presidents get to pick their own First Fights. For President Donald Trump, the choice is clear: repeal and replace Obamacare. Here’s the problem: repeal is easy, all the Republicans in Congress and possibly a majority of Americans are alright with that. But writing and passing a replacement health insurance program is going to be very hard, and ¾ of the electorate has said, don’t do one without the other. Nina Burleigh, National Political Correspondent of Newsweek has been covering the Obamacare controversies.

The most powerful, most deadly opioid painkiller yet is Carfentanil. Investigative reporter Erika Kinetz of the Associated Press broke the story of how kilograms of Carfentanil can get from China to the USA, where it has caused dozens of deaths in just last six month. Canadian authorizes have said a kilogram of Carentanil could be made into 50 million deadly doses. After Kinetz’ stories went global, China seems to have moved towards a crackdown on a drug that is almost never abused there.

When it comes to ending homelessness, Salt Lake City and County and the State of Utah are rated #1 in both planning and execution. But, despite these best efforts, the problem of homelessness and public anxiety about it continue to grow. Christopher Smart of the Salt Lake Tribune on a good, but imperfect social safety net and the people who fall through it. One plan is to shut a big homeless shelter that’s become a public eyesore and replace it with 4 smaller shelters. If 4 places can be found for them. That’s a big “if.”

Most people who live in the middle east are surrounded by crushing poverty and cruel competition for jobs. This is why education can be such a life and death issue. But the Mideast is also suffused in religious strife, among Islamic sects, between Muslims and members of other minority religions, and between those who question -- what is school for? Preparing students to compete in the secular world, or perfecting their religious beliefs. RAND Corporation analyst Shelly Culbertson on the battle for the classroom in the Middle East.

There are more than 60 million people in migration in the world today…more than ever before. Why? Demetrios Papademetiou, founder of the Migration Policy Institute says rising economic and social inequality, political tyranny and criminal violence are all partly to blame. And then there are rising literacy and access to the Internet. These days, almost everyone who is unhappy where they are know there are other places which sound better. If only they could get there. Most don’t. Which helps explain today’s refugee crisis.

A program Dr Martin Luther King Jr might have liked, about Islam, in America, and how this country, its traditional freedom and tolerance have shaped a largely home-made version of a traditional religion. Lawrence Pintak, Dean of the Edward R Murrow School of Journalism at Washington State University on how America’s Muslims have used their freedom to protect their homeland from terrorism. This is just one thing Pintak says President Donald Trump needs to understand about American Islam.

Since the mysterious and unsuccessful coup against his government in June, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been cracking down…especially on the country’s Kurdish minority and on its education system from kindergarten teachers to university deans. Xanthe Ackerman who spent years in Turkey training young journalists, on the effects of a purge of thousands of teachers and the imposition of a new, specifically Sunni Islamic curriculum. Parents are protesting. The government seems not to care.